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The Panda Security company has launched its new suite of antivirus products for 2010 and has also announced a bonus competition for affiliates that runs through the end of July. If you are an affiliate marketer and have not joined this particular program yet, you can do so through Commission Junction at cj.com. Meanwhile, if you’re actually looking to download the Panda antivirus software, you can go to the correct page by clicking on the banner to the left. For more information on the new titles and promotions, here is the latest news from the company that arrived by email yesterday.

Panda Security is pleased to announce the launch of our 2010 titles; Panda’s Home and Home Office products are now even better! To celebrate the 2010 product launch we’re going to give away one year full product licenses to the new titles through our ‘2010 Product Launch Affiliate Bonus Competition’. The competition will run from June 24th through to July 31st (12:00 AM PST). Here’s what you have to do to win a prize:

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You can easily optimize and improve the performance of any PC running Windows XP or Vista by following a few easy steps.

Remove Unnecessary Files From Your Hard Drive - Disk Cleanup

The Disk Cleanup tool can be useful for locating all those temporary Internet files, downloaded program files (such as ActiveX controls), and Windows temporary files that are hidden on your computer. After it scans your system, you get to choose what you want the tool to delete. It also allows you to choose optional Windows components and installed programs that you no longer use and may want to remove. This should be done at least once a week to ensure best performance.

To Use Disk Cleanup:

1. Click Start, click My Computer, right-click Local Disk (usually C:), click Properties, then click Disk Cleanup.

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Photoshop comes with various selections tools you could utilize to specify what region of an image you want to manipulate. Once you have a selection area defined using these tools, the software will preserve all pixel information outside the selected region. Selection tools are compatible with each other regardless of their corresponding operations, thus, you could create pixel precise selection regions via any number of steps to define the region itself.

You can find the selection tools right under the Move tool in the toolbox. By default, Photoshop gives you the Rectangular Marquee Tool — hotkey: m — which lets you define a rectangular selection region. The simplest selection you could create in Photoshop is to define a custom rectangular shape with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, though this is also the method to define an area that you want to keep from an image. With a document of your choosing opened, go ahead and designate an area of the document using a rectangular selection. Now try using manipulative tools like a Brush or even Filters on the image. You will see that pixels outside this simple selection will not be affected by the actions you perform, but pixels inside the selection region will be manipulated.

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This article by PSoh is a quick tutorial on how to shrink a photo or reduce the size of an image without having to learn Photoshop or mess around with complicated graphics editing programs. Perhaps not surprisingly, it involves the use of that classic tool of amateur graphics editing, Microsoft Paint. It’s not a bad solution for doing simple things like cropping and posting screenshots to forums, although by the time I started this blog, I had moved on to using another free image editor called Irfanview. If you find yourself needing to resize images frequently, I would recommend going with this one over MS Paint if you have a few minutes to learn the basic functions.

These days, cameras come with increasingly large mega pixel capabilities, some even going as high as 15 MP. However, uploading such large files, be it as an attachment to an email or to Facebook or a blog, can be a pain. To shrink a photo in Windows without using Adobe Photoshop or similar photo editing programs, simply follow these four easy steps:

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Spyware consists of malicious software that is installed on a personal computer without the owner’s consent. This software can take partial control over the computer system or otherwise work to detract from its performance. Spyware is not the only name by which this sort of offensive software is known, as it has also been labelled adware, foistware, malware, or crapware by particularly frustrated victims. Whilst these different varieties of software accomplish diverse goals, they are grouped together under the title of spyware. Because spyware is an annoying and unwanted addition to any computer, it resorts to trickery to convince the user to install it. No computer owner will knowingly install malicious software on their computer –- spyware succeeds in deceiving them either by attaching itself to a more desirable download or by pretending to be a useful program.

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Zoltan Gyalog has come out with another nice tutorial article, this time focusing on a Photoshop technique called non-destructive editing, which is a way to modify images without making permanent, irreparable changes to them or “destroying” any of the pixels. Meanwhile, if you happen to be a Photoshop enthusiast, this same author has written another useful tutorial on colorizing black and white images in Photoshop.

Non-destructive editing is a workflow that focuses on leaving the source content of a project unmodified. The idea behind the concept is to create non-permanent edits. In other words: dynamic edits you could adjust later as need dictates. Ever since version number 3, Photoshop supports layers. The layer system is a key element of non-destructive edits. By default, the software handles all untouched images you open up as a Background reference. If you take a look at the Layers palette – hotkey: F7 – you will see that the project consists of the opened image and it is referred by Photoshop as the Background. A Background is not a layer though and layer-exclusive effects are not applicable on top of it.

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A driver or device driver is a small software program that enables your PC to communicate with and control a particular hardware device connected to your computer such as a printer, mouse, keyboard, or DVD drive. A device driver is required for every type and model of hardware device attached to your computer.

Device drivers are often provided with the operating system, applications program, or hardware device. For example, Windows XP/Vista includes built in device drivers for various common hardware devices. When a hardware device is connected to your PC, the operating system recognizes the occurrence and configures the device driver software automatically. If your operating system doesn’t include the required driver, you will need to load it when you connect the device to your computer. The driver for the hardware device is normally found on the install disk that came with your device when it was originally purchased. You can also locate the driver on the website of the hardware device manufacturer.

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Adware is a type of spyware renowned for being more annoying than malicious. In its purest form it functions merely to provide targeted advertisements to the Internet surfer. Easily recognisable by both the pop-up advertisements and banners displayed on the Internet page, adware doesn’t seem the most dangerous software to download.

A common method of recouping production costs for software developers is to install adware into their program. They can then gain money through advertising without having to charge for the main purpose of their ‘free’ download. This type of adware is distracting but isn’t designed to do any lasting damage; at its worst it will merely annoy the computer user.

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A few hours ago I received an email about some new promotions that Logitech is running for the upcoming weekend. I was recently approved for their affiliate program, which means that I have access to early notification on some of the better deals from this particular company. Normally I am hesitant about making these “promo code” types of posts because the sales are usually temporary, and it’s a real hassle to go back and update dozens or hundreds of such pages with the latest promotional material. Some readers do not like them much either because they read too much like advertisements instead of whatever it is they think a website is supposed to look like.

In this case, however, Logitech seems to have pretty good products overall (in fact, I’m actually typing this on a Logitech G15 keyboard) so I don’t really have any qualms about promoting them. They specialize in mice, keyboards, webcams, gaming accessories, universal remotes, and other computer peripherals. Here is the information contained in the recent email, along with the relevant links and promo codes. I have set the links to open in a separate window so that you can remain on the site and check out other posts or offers, but I can change this back to the old “open in same window format” if you like.

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This introductory article from my Computers and Internet pack provides a brief overview of what HTML is and what it is used for. It is not an actual tutorial that shows you how to “do” HTML; that particular topic will be covered in later articles. However, it does explain some information about the advent of the World Wide Web and traces the development of HTML up to the beginning of the 21st century.

Presentation of HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a language called “marking” (from “structuring” or “markup”) whose role is to formalize writing a document with formatting tags. The tags can indicate how it must be submitted on paper, and they also establish links with other documents. HTML allows reading documents on the Internet from different machines, thanks to the HTTP protocol, allowing network access to documents identified by unique addresses known as URLs.

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This rather lengthy article on the various components of laptop computers is one that I managed to acquire from one of those infamously anonymous authors from the DigitalPoint forums. Although the English usage in the original copy was rather choppy in places, I was able to salvage it by applying my editing and proofreading skills. Meanwhile, the image to the left links to the Acer Aspire One AOA150-1447 8.9-Inch Netbook, which is currently one of the most popular laptops available at Amazon. Of course, you can also choose from several other models after clicking through to the page.

Relegated a few years ago to primarily office use, the laptop now has a capacity for processing and storage that is close to the desktop, allowing it to easily provide cutting-edge multimedia functions such as DVD, video games, 3D image processing, and many others. Although the price of a laptop remains higher than that of a desktop computer because of its mobility, its use is also more diverse as it can be taken almost anywhere.

However, given its small footprint, most parts of the laptop are integrated and can be changed, which is why it is necessary to choose its features and technical specifications according to what you actually want to do with it. An additional advantage is that the integration of all parts by the manufacturer minimizes the risk of conflicts due to incompatible hardware.

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